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A Monster for Many:
Talking with H. P. Lovecraft

By Robert H. Waugh

[Cover]

Back Cover Text

In the 1990s, Robert H. Waugh—now Emeritus Professor of English at the State University of New York at New Paltz—emerged as one of the most profound and learned commentators on H. P. Lovecraft. He has brought to the study of the Providence writer a deep knowledge of literature in English, French, Latin, and other languages, and a sensitivity to the complex nuances found in Lovecraft’s literary work.

This third volume of his essays continues the pattern of his earlier books, The Monster in the Mirror and A Monster of Voices. Here we have studies of Lovecraft’s use of the imagery of wells in “The Colour out of Space”; the cosmic history of alien species in At the Mountains of Madness and “The Shadow out of Time”; the role that the fictional Miskatonic University plays in Lovecraft’s fiction; and the influence of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on several Lovecraft tales. Other essays discuss Lovecraft’s influence on such science fiction writers as Arthur C. Clarke, Fritz Leiber, and Philip K. Dick, as well as such understudied tales as “Cool Air” and The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. And Waugh’s long rumination about Lovecraft’s response to the Nobel Prize winners of his day displays to the full the author’s wide-ranging expertise on world literature.

Robert H. Waugh continues to display a mastery of Lovecraft’s life, work, and thought that makes every one of his essays a feast for the mind.

Contents

  • Introduction
  • Part One: Histories and Stories
    • Of the Midnight Ride
    • Lovecraft Dallies with Historiography
    • Where Lovecraft Lost His Telescope: His Kingston and the Towns around It
  • Part Two: Wells, Mirages, Madness, and Academe
    • The Brimming Wells
    • Looming at the Mountains of Madness
    • At Home in Miskatonic U.
    • Lovecraft’s Rats and Doyle’s Hound: A Study in Reason and Madness
  • Part Three: Apartments and Books
    • “Cool Air,” the Apartment Above, and Other Stories
    • Lovecraft’s Influence in Science Fiction
    • Lovecraft Dallies with the Nobel Prize
  • Part Four: Apologies and Defenses
    • An Apology in Kadath
    • An Apology for John Keats et Alii
  • Works Cited
  • Index

Bibliographic Information

A Monster for Many: Talking with H. P. Lovecraft. By Robert H. Waugh. New York, NY: Hippocampus Press; 2021; ISBN 978-1-61498-340-8 (softcover); 240 pages.

Purchasing This Book

This book may be purchased in paperback from Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble or directly from the publisher, Hippocampus Press.

 
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